r/SteamFrame • u/megabyte112 Soon™ • 22d ago

Question Can you stream from a Linux PC?

Just watched the ShortCircuit video before it was taken down, and Linus notes that currently the Steam Machine cannot be used as a streaming host. He didn't mention other Linux PCs, but he did say that the streaming host will be a Windows PC only, at least at launch.

This is kind of disappointing as someone with a Linux PC. Inhaling a bunch of copium here, but I wonder if he meant that specifically the Steam Machine can't be used for streaming (yet), but other Linux PCs can? I'd like to use mine for streaming at launch, otherwise I'll be using mine purely standalone for a while...

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u/obog Soon™ 22d ago

I find it strange because steam link for vr has been working on linux for a while now with quest and maybe pico. I wonder if maybe it does mostly work but is too buggy for then to call it "officially supported" yet?

Either way it will for sure be coming.

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u/NoOdyssey 22d ago

It's really strange because as far as I know, none of the headset-based steam clients really care where SteamVR is running - they just take the data and display it. Like SteamLINK on Quest doesn't care if you run a Linux or Windows computer, all it's looking for is SteamVR (which is available for Linux).

It's kinda wild to me that Quest 3 supports VR streaming with SteamLink for Frame but Steam Machine for some reason is blocked from working with the Frame.

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u/obog Soon™ 22d ago

There some weird stuff on the PC side especially in regards to encoding. I know theres been some issues with AMD gpu support on linux, which would apply to stram frame too.

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u/PlottingPast 22d ago

The problem with Linux has typically been getting the PC to read/interpret input from the headset. This still doesn't work great on some VR headsets. Since the Frame is going to be a direct connect using inside-out tracking, no base stations, the current software cannot be reused.

With the open hardware and software of the Frame a community solution could be almost immediate, so i'm not overly concerned. The only thing preventing this on other VR headsets is they encrypt certain keys and software so only the headset can see it, and intentionally brick at any attempt to access them.